House passes GOP budget plan promising deep cuts

ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 22, 2013 02:23 AM

This photo taken March 20, 2013 shows Lindsey Tucker, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access, speaking to a group in Newport, Vt., to explain Vermont's health care exchange program. Three years, two elections, and one Supreme Court decision after President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, its promise of health care for the uninsured may be delayed or undercut in much of the country because of entrenched opposition from many Republican state leaders. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)AP

ASSOCIATED PRESS

March 22, 2013 02:23 AM

WASHINGTON -- Moving on two fronts, the Republican-controlled House on Thursday voted to keep the government running for the next six months while pushing through a tea-party flavored budget for 2014 that would shrink the government by an additional $4.6 trillion over the next decade.

The spending authorization on its way to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature leaves in place $85 billion in spending cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies. The result will be temporary furloughs for hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors over the next six months and interrupted, slower or halted services and aid for many Americans.

The nonbinding GOP budget plan for 2014 and beyond calls for a balanced budget in 10 years' time and sharp cuts in safety-net programs for the poor and other domestic programs.

Thursday's developments demonstrated the split nature of this year's budget debate. Competing nonbinding budget measures by each party provide platforms for political principles; at the same time Capitol Hill leaders forged a bipartisan deal on carrying out the government's core responsibilities, in this case providing money for agencies to operate and preventing a government shutdown.

The GOP budget proposal, similar to previous plans offered by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., demonstrates that it's possible, at least mathematically, to balance the budget within a decade without raising taxes. But to do so Ryan, his party's vice presidential nominee in 2012, assumes deep cuts that would force millions from programs for the poor like food stamps and Medicaid and cut almost 20 percent from domestic agency budget levels assumed less than two years ago.

Ryan's plan passed the House on a mostly party-line 221-207 vote, with 10 Republicans joining Democrats against it.

Meanwhile, the Democrat-controlled Senate debated for a second day its first budget since the 2009 plan that helped Obama pass his health-care law. A vote on the Senate measure is expected late today or early Saturday.

The dueling House and Senate budget plans are anchored on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum in Washington, appealing to core partisans in warring GOP and Democratic tribes long gridlocked over how to attack budget deficits. The GOP plan caters to tea party forces while Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., crafted a measure designed to nail down support from liberal senators like Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who vehemently oppose cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security.

What the Ryan and Murray budgets both fail to do is reach out to the political middle, where any possible bargain would have to be forged.